TSPSC has got another feather in its cap

Hyderabad: In a yet another feather in the cap, Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) on Sunday concluded the massive exercise of successfully conducting 48 Teacher Recruitment Test (TRT) exams in 16 sessions within a span of just eight days, between February 24 and March 3.

In the process of holding 48 examinations, the TSPSC ended-up setting a record of sorts, since this was for the first time that an online Computer Based Recruitment Test (CBRT) was held in eight different languages including Urdu, Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali and English simultaneously.

“This is pioneering work because no other PSC in India has ever tried to hold online examinations at this scale and in so many languages. What gives us more satisfaction is that meritorious students have benefitted from this exercise because there was no space for malpractice,” said Chairman, TSPSC, Prof Ghanta Chakrapani.

The TSPSC Chairman said the experiment to hold online examination in different vernacular languages was a bold one, which in the end came off successfully. “It’s a logistical nightmare to hold examinations based on physical questions papers when the number of students appearing for a particular language is less. So, we decided to go online,” he said.

A whopping 2, 39, 986 candidates appeared for the TRT examinations and competed for 8,792 posts in various categories. Of the 48 exams, as many as 43 examinations were online based while the rest of the five were on OMR sheets.

“It was a challenge to present vernacular script in the online format. We flew in experts from various States to help us come-up with a foolproof vernacular online script. I must appreciate the confidential department of TSPSC, who worked day and night to hold the exams at such a massive scale,” said PSC Chairman said.

The TSPSC Chairman said one of the main advantages of online tests was that it was virtually impossible for candidates to indulge in malpractice. The entire system of setting the question papers had been made dynamic, which meant candidates sitting together or at one place would not get the same question papers.

“We have the ability to change the order of questions as well as the options for the multiple choice questions to different candidates,” Professor Chakrapani said.